Intelligence analysts exist to provide unbiased, unvarnished assessments to decision-makers. Those assessments must be free to go wherever facts and reason dictate, even if it means going against the grain of a particular political narrative. Such independence is the currency of the analytical realm.

The issue of independence is so critical it is essential that the analysts’ allegations of suppressed or altered intelligence assessments be investigated thoroughly and expeditiously. The Pentagon’s inspector general is on the case.

If the allegations are determined to be well founded it would mean that top brass at a combatant command violated the sacrosanct professional code of intelligence to provide objective analysis, free of political bias and personal agendas. The fact that as many as 50 analysts reportedly signed the complaint filed with the inspector general suggests that the problem is not a stand-alone case but systemic. Signing onto a whistleblowing complaint can easily be a career-ender. The analysts who made the very difficult decision to take this step must be commended for reporting their concerns about political influence corrupting their work.

This is a serious charge. It will be interesting to see what the IG determines.

We'll see if anything comes of this. Given that the atmosphere emanates from the top down, I'm not hopeful.

Also, I've got a question for Cassandra- whoever leaked this is as wrong as the SgtMaj that put on facebook his issues with Mabus handling of the women in combat study, right? But if this isn't leaked, would you have any confidence that anything at all would be done about this? At some point, isn't going outside of channels necessary to make the ultimate bosses (the people) aware of what's going on in their government? You brought up the point about our complaint that in this case it's o.k. to break the rules is just a mirror of those who support 'whistle blowers' from the other side. I think that's an indictment of a tactic, when what should or should not be indicted is what that tactic is in service to.

Or, put more simply, at what point does it become acceptable to break the rules and leak or speak outside of proper channels?